Chloë Joan López
chlo'jo'lo'
A Moment's Worth

Spent the morning swallowing rocks. Gastroliths make everything easier to digest, but these ones sometimes have jagged edges mandating regurgitation for polish. Then I go around and have them signed. Everything hovers at standstill for hundreds of milliseconds, getting old. Expiring. Going stale.

I am still ill. The sunlight is smeary through my rheumy eyes. My new familiar, flesh-and-blood for once, is also worrisomely ill, in a familiar way. (Never fear, Jonquil still lives.) Thus my worry is self-worry.

In punishment for failing to dig dreams: insomnia.

In punishment for thinking I have something to say: nothing to say. I cannot figure how the universe figures anything to get said. What am I waiting for, an imprimatur? The imprimatur of singing, of merely opening one's mouth, is all you or I are ever going to get. But I've lost that pride, lost that arrogance, and thusly feel sewn shut.